Community Survey: What’s in your vacation plan?

Although the United States is the only industrialized country that does not require employers to provide paid vacation days and several recent studies have found Americans are taking less vacation than they used to, that may be starting to change, according to Project Time Off, a group financed by the U.S. travel industry.

The group recently reported that that Americans in 2017 are using slightly more vacation days than they did in the past few years, although they’re still using taking fewer vacation days in a year than they did from 1976 and 2000.

More than 70 percent of the respondents to our most recent 1Q community survey said they plan on taking more than two weeks of vacation this year.

The cellphone survey of 250 people living in communities served by Reporter Newspapers and Atlanta INtown found that three in 10 respondents planned to take more than three weeks of vacation this year, and another four in 10 planned on using two to three weeks of vacation. Only 3 percent planned to take less than a week of vacation and just another 3 percent planned to take no vacation at all.

The amount of time off respondents said they’d take appeared to relate to their ages, with older respondents reporting plans for longer vacations. That could reflect their longevity at work and the amount of vacation time they’ve earned on the job.

Asked to choose from categories how much vacation time they planned to use this year, respondents aged 45 to 54 chose “more than three weeks” slightly more than other choices offered in the survey. Other groups chose “two to three weeks” slightly more than the other available options, but 18-year-olds to 24-year-olds chose “one to two weeks” or “two to three weeks” slightly more than other options.

Respondents also said they plan to travel during vacation. More than half said they would visit parts of the United States outside Georgia and another 29 percent planned trips abroad. Only 10 percent planned to stay within the state. Just 4 percent said they would stay home.